Yair Golan says Netanyahu is to blame as Trump moves to halt US security aid

Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats party, has attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after US President Donald Trump announced a halt to American aid for Israel's security needs. According to a statement carried by N12, the Israeli television news channel, Golan said ending the aid does heavy damage both to Israel's security and to quality of life in the country.

Golan argued that the burden of paying for defence at what he called a critical moment would now fall entirely on the Israeli public. He said a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American assistance rather than see it ended, and that Netanyahu was deepening a security and economic crisis and putting the country's future at risk. The Jerusalem Post reported the remarks under the label "another massive failure", presenting them as an accusation that Netanyahu had endangered national security over the aid question.

Who Yair Golan is

Golan leads the Democrats, an opposition party in the Knesset, Israel's parliament in Jerusalem. He regularly addresses reporters at the Knesset and has positioned himself as a sharp critic of the Netanyahu government. His statement on the aid announcement follows that pattern: rather than addressing Washington, he directed his criticism at the prime minister, holding him responsible for the outcome.

What Golan said about the cost

The core of Golan's argument, as carried by N12, is financial as much as military. He framed American security aid as something that eases pressure on the Israeli budget and, by extension, on households. If that support stops, he said, Israelis themselves will have to cover the cost of security needs. His phrase about quality of life signals that he sees the issue reaching beyond the defence establishment into the wider economy.

In his words, the halt is "heavy damage to Israel's security", and Netanyahu is "endangering Israel's future". Those lines come from the statement as reported in Hebrew by N12 and have been translated here.

Why US aid matters in Israeli politics

American assistance for Israel's security has long been treated in Israel as a pillar of the relationship between the two countries, and the question of how a prime minister manages ties with Washington is a recurring line of attack in domestic politics. Golan's statement uses that framing directly: his charge is not only that the aid is ending, but that the prime minister failed to defend it and should instead have been pushing for more.

For readers outside Israel, the significance is that criticism of this kind turns a foreign policy decision taken in Washington into a domestic political argument in Jerusalem about competence and responsibility. Opposition leaders typically respond to developments in the US relationship by asking what the government did, or failed to do, to shape them.

How the two reports compare

Both reports attribute the criticism to Golan and link it to US aid. N12 carried the fuller text of his statement and described the trigger explicitly as Trump's announcement on stopping American aid for security needs. The Jerusalem Post report, as available, consists mainly of its headline and a photograph of Golan speaking to reporters at the Knesset; it characterises his remarks as an accusation of a major failure but the text supplied does not include further detail. The two accounts do not contradict each other.

What the reports do not say

Neither report sets out the terms of Trump's announcement: whether all security aid or only part of it is affected, when any halt would take effect, or what reason the US president gave. Neither report includes a response from Netanyahu or his office to Golan's accusations, or any reaction from other government ministers or opposition parties. Golan's claim that the costs will fall solely on the Israeli public is his own assessment, and the reports do not give figures for the aid involved or for any budget impact.